Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

In N.A.S.L., Minnesota on Road to Another Title, and Perhaps Oblivion

In what sport, in what universe, could a team potentially win its second consecutive league title and then turn out the lights … for good?

Welcome to soccer in North America and the Minnesota Stars of the N.A.S.L.

The Stars, who play about 20 miles north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, have a chance to defend their title when they face the Tampa Bay Rowdies this weekend. Minnesota won the first leg of the two-game series last week at the National Sports Center in Blaine, Minn., before a crowd of more than 4,000. The return match will be played at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Saturday night. The Stars finished the regular season in sixth place in the eight-team league before ousting Puerto Rico and then top-seeded San Antonio.

The issue for the soccer team in Minnesota, one that has been around in various incarnations for the past 23 years, is that the Stars are now owned by the North American Soccer League. The owners of the league’s other eight teams (nine if you count the incoming New York Cosmos) will vote on whether to continue to finance the club beyond Dec. 31. That vote is scheduled for this weekend.

“There have been other league owned and operated teams in various sports, Phoenix in the N.H.L. and New Orleans in the N.B.A.,” the N.A.S.L. Commissioner David Downs said in a telephone interview from league headquarters in Miami. “This is a very unique situation and I think there are two truisms: It makes no sense for a league to own and operate a team in the long run. This was an emergency situation to ensure the league has the minimum number of teams [eight] to be the second division as established by the federation. By the same token, it is absolutely fair to say the league highly values the Minneapolis-St. Paul market. It is a top 15 market and is quite good for us to be in. With our economic model a team should thrive in a market that size with long history of support for professional soccer.”

Jeremy Olson/digitalgopher.netMinnesota’s Amani Walker after scoring in last week’s first leg of the N.A.S.L. championship series against Tampa Bay.

Downs, a former television executive who was also the head of the United States group that was trying to land the 2018 or 2022 World Cups, has been the league’s top executive for the past two seasons, but said he planned to step down before next season and retire. The N.A.S.L. expanded this year to San Antonio and will add the Cosmos next year. Traffic, the Brazil-based sports marketing company, is a major player in the N.A.S.L., running three teams.

In Minnesota, the Stars have been seeking a local owner to buy the club, at a modest cost (the entry fee for a new franchise is only $1.5 million and the cost of buying an existing team is comparable) in the hope new management could move the team to a new urban stadium. One stumbling block has been the emergence of the N.F.L.’s Minnesota Vikings, who in negotiations with the state and city for a new stadium in Minneapolis secured the exclusive rights for five years (beginning in 2016) to an M.L.S. team.

“The commitment to the Vikings is not with M.L.S. and it is in a particular venue,” said the Stars’ top executive, Djorn Buchholz. Buchholz previously worked for the Stars’ predecessor, the Thunder, went to work with the league club in Austin after the Thunder folded and then was appointed by the league to run the Minnesota franchise in the absence of an independent owner. “It doesn’t prohibit anyone from doing it sooner.”

Professional soccer in Minnesota has a long and storied history, dating to the original N.A.S.L. and the Minnesota Kicks, who often drew crowds in excess of 40,000 to Metropolitan Stadium, which is now the site of the Mall of America in suburban Bloomington. Since the demise of the first N.A.S.L. in the mid-1980s, soccer in Minnesota has seen the Thunder and the N.S.C. Stars come and go, while playing in the United Soccer Leagues and now the reborn N.A.S.L.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Buchholz said about the prospect of finding a new owner. “This is an important weekend. Winning the championship again would make a decision by the board more difficult than it already is. Winning the championship two years in a row makes the team more attractive.”

According to Downs, there is one local Minnesota person deeply interested in buying the team, though he declined to identify him.

Correction: October 25, 2012An earlier version of this blog post misstated the date of the return match between the Stars and the Rowdies at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, Fla. It will be played Saturday night, not Sunday.

What's Next

About

Goal, The New York Times soccer blog, will report on news and features from the world of soccer and around the Web. Times editors and reporters will follow international tournaments and provide analysis of games. There will be interviews with players, coaches and notable soccer fans, as well as a weekly blog column by Red Bulls forward Jozy Altidore. Readers can discuss Major League Soccer, foreign leagues and other issues with fellow soccer fans.